The Reflection Room

The Reflection Room

by haris khan

The first time Noah saw the mirror, it didn’t reflect him at all.

He had been dared by two classmates to sneak into the abandoned south wing of Carter High, a part of the building sealed off since a fire years ago. The hallways smelled of mold and old paint. Locker doors hung crooked on their hinges, and crumpled pages of forgotten yearbooks littered the floors. But the room at the end of the corridor—the one behind the warped double doors—was untouched.

Room 107.

Noah pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The air was still. Dust floated in fat motes through a slanted beam of sunlight that cut across the space like a stage light. And there it was, leaning against the far wall: a tall, ornate mirror, rimmed with a black, vine-like frame. Despite the dust everywhere else, the mirror’s surface shimmered clean and unblemished.

But Noah wasn’t in it.

He stood in front of it. Waved. Stepped to the left, then right.

Nothing.

Instead, the mirror showed the room exactly as it was—only empty.

And then, something changed.

In the reflection, the door behind him creaked open slowly. Noah turned around in real life. Nothing. When he turned back to the mirror, the door in the reflection was wide open, and a shadow stepped through.

A shadow that looked exactly like him.

He told himself not to go back.

Told himself it was a trick of the light, his imagination, anything to make it ordinary. But he couldn’t forget it. The image of his own double stepping into the room haunted him in his sleep.

The next afternoon, he went back alone.

This time, the mirror did reflect him, but only at first. A moment later, his reflection blinked—out of sync. Then, it raised its hand and pointed to the corner of the room behind him.

Noah spun.

There, barely noticeable under a pile of debris, was a small, rusted tin box.

Inside were three yellowed Polaroids.

The first was of a girl standing in front of a locker, smiling.

The second showed a smashed hallway window.

The third was of a different boy—one Noah recognized from a decades-old missing persons flyer—staring into the mirror with the words: “HE KNOWS” scratched onto the photo in shaky pen.

His breath caught. He stuffed the box into his backpack and ran.

That night, Noah dreamed of fire and smoke. He saw himself trapped behind the mirror, screaming silently while the other version of him walked freely through the world.

He woke up gasping.

Over the next few days, the mirror grew stranger.

It didn’t always show what was happening now. Sometimes, it showed the room as it had been in the past: clean desks, working lights, students laughing and passing notes. Other times, it showed what was going to happen.

Like the time it showed one of his classmates, Jordan, falling down the school stairwell—hours before it actually happened.

Noah tried to warn him. But Jordan laughed it off.

That afternoon, Jordan’s foot slipped on the landing and he tumbled hard. Broke his collarbone.

Noah watched from the top of the stairs, numb with dread.

The mirror had predicted it.

Obsessed, Noah returned to Room 107 every day. He took notes, sketched what he saw in the glass, even tried filming it. But his camera only captured his normal reflection—never the warped realities the mirror showed.

Then came the worst vision yet.

The mirror showed a girl. Alyssa, a friend from biology. She was sitting in the cafeteria when someone—Noah—walked up behind her and dropped a sealed envelope on the table. She opened it, read the contents, and burst into tears.

The mirror shifted.

Now she was running across the parking lot. A car sped forward. She didn’t see it.

Noah screamed at the mirror, banging on it with his fists. “No! Change it!”

But the mirror only stared back.

That day, Noah skipped last period and waited for Alyssa near the cafeteria. When he saw himself—the mirror’s version of him—walking toward her with the envelope, his stomach dropped.

But it wasn’t him.

It was Logan, another junior with the same haircut, same hoodie. Logan dropped something on the table and walked away.

Noah sprinted across the cafeteria, grabbed the envelope from Alyssa’s hands, and tore it in half.

She blinked. “What are you—?”

“You can’t leave,” he panted. “Just… stay inside for ten more minutes.”

Alyssa frowned, but she did. Later, she found out the driver who would have hit her—a senior named Kyle—crashed into a pole just five minutes after that.

Noah saved her. The mirror was right. But the cost of knowing was beginning to break him.

He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t stop watching.

And then, one day, the mirror showed something new.

Him. Standing in Room 107. Alone. And behind him, his reflection grinning.

The real Noah turned around. The room was empty. But in the mirror, his reflection stepped forward and placed its hand on the glass. Its mouth moved:

“Let me out.”

Noah stumbled back. The door slammed shut behind him—on its own.

The mirror went dark.

They found him hours later, unconscious, with shallow cuts on his palms and the broken remains of the mirror scattered around him.

He never spoke of it again.

But sometimes, when walking past the boarded-up Room 107, students say they hear someone knocking from inside.

They say if you look through the cracks in the door at the right time of day, you’ll see yourself in the mirror, smiling back.

Only it’s not really you.

And this time, it wants out.